Friday, January 19, 2007

Ed called this morning to say that our Gambian Visas have been granted (conferred?). He talked to the consular agent at the embassy, who was interested in our trip and supposedly gave Ed a bunch of advice and tips on traveling in his native country. Too bad Ed never gets around to recording any of these experiences, huh?Anyhoo - I think that was the last major pre flight hurdle to overcome. We now have all the visas that must be acquired before arrival (Mauritania and the Gambia). We have our passports (obviously). We have the shots, vaccines, pills and lotions to take us through any remote area of the world. We have our insurance (health and auto) for those areas that require insurance. We don't, funnily enough, have any paperwork to retrieve the bus from the shipping company. Huh. I wonder if that will matter? What would the normal paperwork be, anyway, a claim ticket? A valet receipt? We have our prayer beads, our votive candles, our buddha statue and Ganesh figure, all ready to go (we're taking a shotgun approach to our prayers for assistance). What else? hmm. We have our plane tickets. Some of us even have return tickets (talk about self confidence!). We have maps. We even have a basic itinerary and sense of direction. To top it all off, we even have a hand-held GPS receiver now (thanks, Jeff and Joyce!). What more could we need?Clearly, what we don't need right now is some clear thinking. This is no time for us to come to our senses and think logically, or realistically, on what we are about to do.One more week to go, and all that's left is to get the bags packed.